


Seraphine

by luckybarton



Category: Venus Fly - Grimes ft. Janelle Monáe (Music Video)
Genre: Gen, Jukebox Fanworks Exchange, Jukebox Fanworks Exchange 2018, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 04:11:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14804121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckybarton/pseuds/luckybarton
Summary: It’s always like this when she emerges.





	Seraphine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weakinteraction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/gifts).



> HUGE thanks to Midnight_Run, who agreed to beta this last-minute pinch hit.
> 
> This fic is based on the music video for [Venus Fly by Grimes ft. Janelle Monáe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTLTXDHrgtw).

It’s always like this when she emerges. They preserve her in tar when she isn’t wanted; jolt her back to life when they need another angel. She pulls herself out of the bay gasping and hacking with lungs that haven’t been used for an unnatural amount of time.

The room is more brightly lit than she anticipates, so she squints until her eyes stop burning and the room comes into focus. Two humans stand near her, wearing shiny yellow clothing that obscures everything about their bodies except their faces. If she meets them again, she won't recognise them.

“What the fuck,” one of the revivists says, wiping sticky black liquid from his glove onto a counter. “I didn’t think she’d be so...”

The man trails off. Obviously, artists’ renditions and photographs haven’t prepared him for the reality of her appearance. A long time ago, she found humans strange-looking: short-fingered, flightless primates with bare skin and hairy scalps. Now, they’re a familiar _—_ if repulsive _—_ sight.

She bares her teeth to him and he freaks out and jolts her again. She isn’t quite out before she crashes to the floor, and the force of the impact reverberates through the hollows of her bones.

The second time she wakes up, she can breathe almost fully for the first time in centuries and her feathers have been cleansed of the tar. She’s given bladed weapons of a type she hasn’t seen in several awakenings. Ceremonial armour that could hold no practical use. She doesn’t ask their purpose. It isn’t her role.

She’s performed this task for so long that she almost can’t remember a time before it; when her kind served a higher power than humanity. Humanity, who they had once regarded as little better than rats. In hindsight, they bore a stronger similarity to termites: just as lowly, but finding strength in numbers. Strength and _power,_ enough power to hijack the hierarchical instincts of her kind and bend them to their rule.

Human nations drag out their angels in two circumstances: war or political squabbling. This, she decides, must be the latter. She’s transported to a new arena or stage each day to pace and pose before a crowd of bewildered, screaming onlookers. She does not draw a distinction between fear and excitement. The human expression of each is the same.

The sword she carries is brittle and dull, but burns with a flame that cuts through darkness. They light it before she walks onstage, but she ends up re-lighting it several times during the performance. Sparks flying from her fingertips to the oil on the blade. If the humans notice, they never mention it.

The garments they give her are heavy and overly complex, but they shimmer and arc through the air as she dances. The clothing is the same each time, but on occasion she's provided with a new, identical set. Identical to her leaders, perhaps. The stitching is in a slightly different configuration and the smell has changed sufficiently that she knows they are different objects.

She hopes that they are a sufficient demonstration of whatever this country is attempting to achieve. Good enough that they send her back to the tar, where she can sleep again. Because if it isn’t war she was returned to life for, she wants nothing to do with it. Aiding the humans in the destruction of their own species is the last laugh of the angels, and yet here she is:  bringing them together in celebration or terror—whichever the case may be.

On a subconscious level, the angels chose humanity as their leaders. At some point in history, focusing the efforts of an entire species toward a singular set of goals had been a valid survival mechanism—so they joined themselves psychically. Formed an unbreakable connection, a collective consciousness that keeps them all unanimous. Takes their instinct to follow the orders of a hierarch and replaces it with whatever the collective sees as most powerful. Right now it's humanity, and it's been humanity for a long time.

She can feel shifting in the network, though. A slow change in the consensus that could keep going or revert. She doesn’t know what's happened, but it feels momentous.

She finds out what’s going on from her guards, who are less than judicious about what they gossip about within earshot. Maybe they think she can’t understand since she never interacts, or maybe they just don’t care. The world is at war, they say, and it might not ever end.

Because of the _nukes._

She doesn’t know what _nukes_ are, but she knows if they have humanity in such a deadlock, then they must be more powerful than any of them. That their consensus is _wrong:_ humanity cannot be on top, not while these other beings control them. And the network pushes back at her. But she pushes back harder.

She’s in transit when it finally happens. When her observation has been confirmed by enough of the waking angels to reach a tipping point. When the sleepers around the world wake of their own accord, pushed into action by uncertainty. She can feel it in her skull and hear it in the radio chatter that filters through from the cab; the angels are no longer compliant, humanity is in a state of chaos.

Humanity has never known a time without angels, but the angels have known a time without humanity.

The transition should work like this: an angel would encounter one of their new leaders and receive instructions. They would signal the collective to follow them, and the angels would move the earth to put those plans into being.

The orders never come, though. The _nukes_ are silent; whoever they are, they haven’t expressed any wishes or demands. At first, she thinks that maybe they haven’t reached her yet, but her hopes diminish as time passes. Her orders from the humans in the truck— _to stay put_ —are no longer valid. She’s in the uncomfortable position of needing to decide a course of action.

For the first while, she does nothing. Humans with guns arrive, which threatens her capacity to act on behalf of the _nukes._ She sprays acid toward them, and the humans in the front fall over, screaming. The ones behind them open fire, but the bullets don’t make it through to her, halting in the air before clattering to the ground before her. She steps out into the darkness and spreads her wings, soars into the murky sky. It’s a cloudy night, but she knows where she's going.

It’s never been like this before, going back into stasis. Every other time, she’s been lowered head-first into the tar and jolted into a blackout.

This is different.

She falls in slowly, closing her eyes and drifting below the surface, sinking and sinking before she feels herself going into stasis. She’ll wait for orders; for the angels who remained above ground to signal her.

The _nukes_ will break their silence eventually, but maybe not before humanity dies off without their effort.

Maybe she’ll even get to meet one.


End file.
